If you’re in the craft industry, chances are the majority of your customers are women. You probably knew that. Yet what you might not be aware of is this: Marketing to women is different than traditional marketing. As Faith Popcorn pointed out in her book, EVEolution, marketing to women means building a relationship. As Popcorn pointed out, “Women don’t buy brands, they join them.”

And today’s woman is busier than ever before. She’s got a job, a family, activities and hobbies. How you build a relationship with this customer is going to have a lot to do with how you address her lifestyle. We’ve got marketing tactics to get you started:

Connect With Her

A marketing relationship is based on interaction between two people: The store representative and the customer. This is the retailer’s easiest competitive advantage. If the customer wants bargain prices, she’ll go to a big box retailer. Yet women today are looking for more than a cashier. We want a resource for advice, expert opinions, ideas, feedback and creative connection. Provide that for her and you’ll win a sale—and future business. Here’s how:

• Focus on her. This is more than a simple “let me know if I can help you” comment. You—and your staff—will need to be proactive! This requires more time and more energy per customer than simply ringing up a sale. Employees must graduate from cashiers to sales associates—and get out from behind the register.

Being proactive means asking the customer questions about her project, listening to her and evaluating how you can serve her best. It’s having a dialogue. The introductory, “Hi, how are you today?” greeting is vital. From there, the employee can move into the true customer-service oriented questions.

• Ask her questions about her project. Begin with broad questions and then get more specific. What scrapper doesn’t like to have someone take an interest what she’s making? Of course, the key here is to LISTEN to what the customer is telling you! Create a dialogue just as you would with a friend.

• Make suggestions that are appropriate to the customer’s needs. Become a consultant, not just a salesperson. What else does she need in order to make her experience more fun? A sneak peek at the newest product? A vellum gluing tip? The latest idea book?

Become Her Community

Between work and home there exists a Third Place: the place where people go to hang out, relax, take a break. A Third Place is often a bookstore, coffee shop or internet café. In these days of longer work hours and stress, the Third Place becomes a competitive advantage for independent retailers.

Think crops, classes, demos, clubs. Think of the personality of your store: Is it bright, colorful and upbeat? You can maximize that atmosphere through your marketing message! Play 50’s music, paint each wall a different color and promote your store as the place to play. Use “Come Play With Us at the Scrapbook Shack!” as your advertising slogan. If your store’s personality is calm, soothing and relaxing—maximize that too. Bill your crops as a Scrapping Spa: Hire a masseuse and provide chocolates. Incorporate this pampering ambiance in your ad slogans and marketing verbiage. “Treat Yourself Right at Memory Lane”, for example.

Remember, anyone can provide the customer with paper, but only a few can bring them FUN. And if the customer has fun at your store, she’ll be back.

Anticipate Her Needs

“If my customers ask for it, I bring it in,” said one retailer at a training seminar at HIA. Yikes! This is a dangerous way to do business—yet it’s a common one.

At a recent trade show, retailers commented that they “absolutely” had to have Susan’s Paper Engineering as their customers were asking for it. One retailer said, ”I had all these customers asking me to order it and I told them, “Can’t you wait until next week when I go to the show and I’ll order it there?””

Don’t ever assume your customer is loyal to your store. She may very well shop elsewhere if you can’t, or won’t, provide her with what she wants.

Understand Her Schedule

For scrapbook retailers, the question of the new millennium may very well be: “How can I market to the woman on the go?”

Today’s women are on the move—between work, home, and family activities, your customer barely has time to shop! Are you open when she does have time?

We know of one scrapbook store that’s open from 10-5 every day, except on Sunday when the store is closed. That schedule might work fine for consumers with a whole day free or those with untraditional work shifts, but what about the majority who have 9-5 office jobs? (And no, stay-at-home moms don’t necessarily have the entire day free!) Why not open the store later in the morning, and stay open in the evening so she can stop by on the way home from work?

Sunday is a huge profit opportunity for scrapbook stores—it’s also the day when most scrapbook stores are closed. One Oregon retailer comments, “I make more money in the four hours that I’m open on Sunday than an entire 8-hour weekday.” Take advantage of your customers’ one day of rest—and be open for her!

Merchandise Product in Customer-Friendly Fashion

Having an organized floor plan is imperative to serving your customers. Make sure each product can be easily located. Take a look at these tried-and-true merchandising choices:

• Merchandise product by general theme: Group your papers, stickers, die-cuts, templates, and other products in categories like Heritage, Wedding, Baby, Childhood, Disney and so on.
• Merchandise product by type: Place all vellum papers together, all pens and markers in one place, templates, die-cuts and punches in another.
• Merchandise by vendor, Organize a Paper Pizazz™ section, an EK Success area, a place for Me & My BIG Ideas and other popular vendors.
• A combination of two or more of these merchandising options to best suit your customers’ needs.

Whatever merchandising option you decide on, don’t forget to post large, colorful signage to define each area.

Stock Customer-Friendly Papers

Walking into a store stocked with racks and racks of bulk papers can affect scrappers in different ways. The customer with time to spend in your store might enjoy whiling away half an hour or more to find the perfect blue plaid. But what about the time-pressed scrapper—the woman whose husband and kids are waiting in the car for her? Will she become frustrated at having to search through all that bulk paper?

Why not offer her a choice instead? Rather than slowing your customer down to pick and choose from racks of bulk papers, why not offer her the option of a themed collection of papers?

Imagine your customer is in a hurry and wants to dash in to pick up some vellum for her scrapbook. Most retailers would simply point her in the direction of the bulk vellum papers, where she would pick and choose her designs. Here’s your competitive advantage: offer her the choice between the bulk papers and a book of vellums packaged by style: Pastel Vellum, Heritage Vellum or collections that include patterned papers and patterned vellum sheets that coordinate. What an incredible service—and we’re betting she’ll buy more paper this way too!

After all, books of paper inspire consumers by presenting a coordinated collection. Each sheet of bulk paper looks pretty on it’s own, but a collection of papers is stunning when presented in one book with ideas and sample pages. With bulk papers, the shopper pulls out sheet after sheet—if it strikes her fancy, she’ll buy it. One sheet of bulk doesn’t, and can’t, have the presence of a book.

And what about embellishments? They’re all the rage: customers love them, but are you making it easy for them to get the product they need in a hurry? “We created paper embellishments in book form so consumers could buy a coordinating collection of tags, laser art, alphabet tiles and vellum page headers,” says Hot Off The Press President Paulette Jarvey. “This also gives the retailers a chance to sell an $8.99 item rather than a $1.00 item.”

Whew!

Don’t unlace those track shoes yet! You’re going to need them as long as you have a scrapbook store!

As we said above, women today are moving ever faster—and demanding more from their retailers, especially those Third Places. Your competitive advantage—whether you’re competition is a chain store or another independent—is customer service. The marketing methods described above, combined with simple customer service tactics, will win you sales and secure the loyalty of the Woman on the Go.